MUSSAR How Do You Know If You Love God

0:14Good to be here. We had a good shiur last night. We talked about some interesting topics. Some of the questions that we're asked after the camera turned off. I think we're even better than the shiur, but what can I do? It's not my fault. I tell you guys to ask questions. You just wait for me to turn off the camera. But, Baruch Hashem, we're going to continue the same usual mussar, different questions that we have. We're not back to the Pirkei Avot series yet for the reason that I'm not really sure yet what... What is the next step as far as the next shiur? I know everyone's been looking forward, at least to some extent, to hearing about the Gehenom shiur that I've talked about already for the last month and even for the last couple of years. But to be honest with you, I'm not sure if we are going to give it or not. And if we do decide to give it,

1:21I'm going to tell some of you to leave. And the reason why is because it's not as great as you think it is. It's not as fun. And it's not as exciting as some people think it is. It's one of those shiurim that's going to shock the Jewish world. But sometimes if you're not prepared for it, it will shock you into... into a place that, uh, is very tough to get out of unless you're going to get follow-up treatment constantly. On the opposite end of it, tonight I wanted to do a shiur about something that, for whatever reason or another, people don't think we talk about, which is the love of God. You know, we constantly talk about, for the last few years... about fear of Hashem, fear of the Almighty, and Yirat Shamayim, how it's the foundation of Judaism, how it's a... Hashem Yitbarach himself said that, you know, told the prophets, told Shlomo HaMelech,

2:39And many, many other times in the Torah, to Moshe Rabbeinu and so on, that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of Hashem, that one of the first handful of mitzvot, the fourth mitzvah in the Rambam, is the fear of Hashem. It's one of the foundational principles of faith, to fear the Almighty. And we talk about this extensively, about Yirat Shamayim. Number one, because it is something that's foundational. But number two, even more so, is because it's very rarely a topic that other speakers talk about. Most speakers love and enjoy talking about loving God. Loving God. Talk about love, how you love God, and how He loves you, and all that good stuff. All right. And I've always told you guys that, you know, according to Chazal, we have no idea what we're talking about when we think that we love God. And the reason why is because, according to the Sages, if you look at a few different places in the Gemara and the Zohar and a few other places, um,

3:56They define love very differently than the way we do. The way most people define love is that it's usually based on some type of benefit. If you do good for me, I love you. If you don't do good for me, I care less about you. But that's not love. Love means that you care enough about another to a point that it's beyond your control. Without a care in the world about the outcome. Meaning, if you have a wife, you love her like this. You love her so much that regardless of whether she cooks, cleans, and does anything for you, you still want to give her good. You still want to do good for her. Nothing to do with what she does for you. Nothing to do with it. We learned from Iyov (Job) the Prophet, the righteous Noahide. He says that even if God were to kill me, He was to destroy me, I'd still serve Him. And the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah is a debate. Is that love or is that Yirat Shamayim?

5:24Is that love or is that Yirat Shamayim? It's a debate. Why is it a debate? Because there's a very thin line between the two. Why? Because the first thing you need to have is Yirat Shamayim. The first thing you need to have is fear of the Almighty. First thing. Why? As soon as you acknowledge that Hashem runs the world, your world, the one in your imagination, the one outside of your imagination, the one you understand, the one you don't understand, the one that surrounds you, the one that's in everything. Hashem runs everything. As soon as you understand that, or at least to some extent, immediately you should be scared. Why? Because if you want something to change, and your whole circumstance is to change, like that. No questions asked. One day somebody's alive, five seconds later they're not. It's not like, oh listen, you ready to die? Sure? I'll give you. There's no notice. There's no notice. Nobody gets a message, hey, by the way, you have five days to live. So, When someone understands that every single second that they're alive—I'm not talking about a week, a month, a year, a lifetime—every second you're alive is a miracle. Second, you're alive, that means there was enough oxygen that went into your lungs. And your lungs have enough power without you doing anything. There's no battery connected to them. Your lungs had enough power to take it in, use it, get what they can out of it, and expel what they don't want out of it.

6:53That went into your bloodstream. Your bloodstream had enough power and energy, with no battery, to go through your system. And throughout your whole day, your entire blood flow goes through every part of your veins. Every single blood cell goes through your entire body. No battery, no nothing, no external energy source. And you have the ability to see, you have the ability to hear, you have the ability to speak, you have the ability to do all these different things. But little do we understand and realize that if just one tiny little blood cell, a tiny one, not a big one, not like a cancer cell, just decides, "I'm going to stop. Not I'm going to stop, I'm going to park over here, I'm going to hang out with a couple of guys, we're going to have a few beers, and we're going to stop over here. We're not going to move anymore; we're tired." We're on vacation. It's holiday season. We're on vacation. We're going to stop over here in this cell. This cell over here. Right in this vein. Me, Shmuli, Tzvika, Moshe, Amos, this one. Now we're all going to sit over here. Little do you know, you have a blood clot. Shem HaRachamim, heart attack. This is not like a lot of it. A little bit. A little bit.

8:05So when you understand that the very same Creator that gave you life is continuously and actively giving you life, immediately, if you still have seichel, you should be scared. Now, the natural inclination of fear Even though it should be an instinct, Hashem removed it. That's the genius of the creation. Because He knew, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter explains in Or Yisrael, that if He made it a reflex, if He made it like a natural instinct for you to fear Him, just like you do breathing, just like you do, you know, eating, seeing, and so on and so forth, all the different things that you have in your body, just a natural thing that you do. If the fear of Hashem, which is extremely logical—it's very logical to fear the Creator—came to you naturally, there would be no purpose for the world. Why? You would never sin. You'd never sin. Baruch haba. and so on and so forth, all the different things that you have in your body, just a natural thing that you do. If the fear of Hashem, which is extremely logical—it's very logical to fear the Creator—came to you naturally, there would be no purpose for the world. Why? You would never sin. You'd never sin. Baruch Haba.

9:12You'd never sin. Why? As soon as you have Yirat Shamayim, immediately, you know, am I out of my mind? Who has time to sin? Who has the audacity to sin? You have Yirat Shamayim. So Hashem removed it. He says, you can get it intellectually. You can get it by actively pursuing Yirat Shamayim. Seder. Good news. Now we've talked about this extensively, but Hashem will continue. But now, the Chachamim say, our sages, Zichronam Livracha, Say that there are levels of Yirat Shamayim. There are levels of fear of Hashem. The first level, the lowest level, is just logical, sensible fear of Hashem, which is, I don't want to be punished. Simple. I don't want to do something bad, because I don't want Hashem to send me to Gehinom... I don't want to do something bad, because I don't want to be burned forever, or even for a day, or even for an hour, or even for anything. I don't want to be punished. Not only that, let's say again, almost far from your imagination, which for most of us it is. It's hard for us to imagine a place that's just doom-and-gloom type of thing forever.

10:21It's hard to imagine. You read some Gemara, you get a little bit of an understanding of what it is. But nonetheless, if you don't, and it's still hard for you to imagine, it's easier. It's easy again to imagine. What is it in this world? You wake up in the morning, all of a sudden your side hurts. You have no idea. Why does my side hurt? Yesterday it didn't hurt. Why does it hurt? Did something happen? Did I sleep wrong? How do you sleep wrong? What do you mean? You just go to sleep. I've been sleeping for 35 years. How do you just sleep wrong? I slept wrong. Why? I don't know how to sleep all of a sudden. 40 years I'm sleeping. 50 years I'm sleeping. Now I slept wrong. Now I found the time to sleep wrong. Maybe it's something else. In your mind, a little computer. Maybe it's something else. Maybe I didn't sleep wrong. Maybe there's something there. Maybe this. Maybe that. All of a sudden, maybe Hashem is punishing me. If you're sensible, or you think, you know what? Now I know what happened. Now I know what happened. The rabbi said, if you do, do, do, do, do, this is going to happen. It's happening. Maybe it's this. Maybe this is it. You start imagining, oh, I'm getting punished right now, and na, na, na, na. And I have a growth, and I have a this, and I have a that. And Baruch Hashem, at the end of the day, nothing happens. Everything goes back, and you really did sleep wrong. But Hashem wanted you to have that kaparat avonot. Why? To wake you up.

11:45To wake you up. Sometimes, unfortunately, there is something. So, the sensible fear, the sensible yirat shamayim, is one where you don't want to be punished in this world. If you tell somebody what's the worst thing that could happen to you, usually they don't think about health, because people take it for granted to be healthy, especially if they've never been really sick, not just a cold or things like that. So they tell you, if I lose my job, if I lose my money, if I lose, you know, usually it's something material, something physical. People are so connected to their physical world that the Gemara calls money damim, meaning blood. Why? You spend your whole life, all of your blood, chasing money. This is why someone, before they become a spendaholic, before they start spending all their money on stupid things, And I don't just mean spending it on paintings for $46 million. I mean spending it on things that are just completely unnecessary. Like some people spend an exorbitant amount of money on cars. You know, listen, I'm not saying you have to go on a bicycle everywhere. But when some people are spending $100,000, $150,000, $250,000 on cars, when in reality they can't afford it.

13:10Now, if you're a multimillionaire, you have tens of millions of dollars in the bank. To you, it's the same thing as any average Joe spending $30,000. Fine, enjoy. But the reality is that if you walk around in any neighborhood that's middle-class, you'll see that in many cases, the cars in the lot are more valuable than the house. the cars in the lot, I mean, I'm telling you, walk around sometimes with my wife and kids, and you see, you know, listen, I want good for everyone, I don't care less about it. But I see some people, you have a house, regular, normal house, whatever the house, I don't know, 300,000, 400,000, whatever it is, but you see there's two, three cars in the lot, two, three cars sitting over there, and the cars, I mean, you, Easily 300,000, easily, each one. Each one is 100,000, each one is 75,000. The cars, which are not going to survive more than just a few years, are more valuable, or at least close to being as valuable, as the house. The best part is, most of the time, the house is rented. That's the best part: the house is rented, the car is rented, everything is rented, and no one has any money. So...

14:30The thing is though, that when you actually start learning Mussar, you start understanding, wait a minute, if money is viewed as blood in the Torah, that means that I've spent an X amount of blood, X amount of my life, To get this money. So before I spend an extra $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, or better yet, $5,000, before I spend an extra $5,000 on getting a navigation system I'm never going to use, or on those extra cool-looking rims that no one's ever going to care about because no one cares about your rims other than the guy that's selling them to you. The next time that I'm going to spend an extra $5,000 on this nonsense, let me think about it. How much of my life did I have to give for this? If you think about it logically, if you think about it that way, wait a minute. To make $5,000, that was a month's worth of work. That was two weeks' worth of work. Let's say, for an average person, maybe it's a month's worth of work.

15:38So it's a month's worth of work you're going to spend on rims. Think about it: you woke up in the morning, and after you finished doing everything you had to do, you went to work from 9 to whenever, and you worked, and you dealt with customers, and headaches, and baayot, and problems, and this, and that, and all these things, every single day, for a whole month. For what? For rims. radio for a navigation system that you actually work a whole entire month for, something you can't even keep. Why? Because you have to give it back after a couple of years. So, this is us when we don't think. When we don't think, we end up doing what we talked about in last night's shiur and get to such a point where Hashem gives us a gift that becomes a curse, and... What's the gift of the curse? He gives us more money than we know what to do with, and we end up buying stupid things like this for $46 million. This is a painting that was sold recently for $46 million. Okay? This is the shiur from last night, so I guess none of you guys watched the shiur yet. Now, I'm asking you, which one do you think is better looking?

17:02Okay? This is my daughter's painting. She's two and a half. I want only 30 million for this. Only 30 million. There are more colors on this one. More action in this one. Look at the expression on this painting. We're trying to raise 250,000. I'm going to raise it for 30 million. 30 million guys, that's it. You have a discount. Much deeper. Look at the expression over here. She was very happy here, a little less happy here. She got the toy over here. She was watching one of our cartoons. I mean, come on. This was actually when I was upset. That's why there's black over here. She's upset, that's why it's black over there. There's expression here. You guys don't know anything about paying 30 million. This is a discount. This is what happens when you're foolish. This is what happens, guys. This is what happens. You spend 46 million dollars on this, so... My point is, if the person learned a little bit of Mussar, learned a little bit, truly, just Erech Elyon, the value of things based on Hashem, foolishness wouldn't happen. So the sages say that when you start understanding the concept of Yirat Shamayim, that someone is watching you,

18:19Someone is listening to you. Someone is writing down every single thing that you do. To such an extent that when you get up to Shamayim after 120, they're going to even judge you on the basic nonsense conversations between you and your wife. What's a basic nonsense conversation? What is it? Did you turn off the light? No. They're going to judge you on that. They're going to judge you. Did you spend? Did you say no? Didn't you answer appropriately? Did you use too many words? It says don't spend too much time speaking to your wife about nothing. If you're gonna speak about something, it has to be valuable. Don't just talk about nothing. Oh, what about the flowers? What about this? What about the weather? What do you think it's gonna be tomorrow? What do you think about the president? Do you think it's good that he made Jerusalem the capital? What do you think of this? What do you think of that? All this stuff that people love to talk about—in Shamayim, they're gonna... Hey, look how much you spent. You lived 80 years, and you spent 15 of them talking about the president. And you aren't even a politician. So these are things you have to take into consideration when you have Yirat Shamayim. Now, the sages explained in Iyov, in the Gemara, when they talk about it as a debate. Why is there a debate? They say Iyov...

19:44Iyov, who got mamash tested with a test that we can't even imagine. In a matter of moments, he went from being a multi-billionaire, not millionaire, billionaire, to losing all of his money. Nothing, zero. It wasn't like it went down over months, little by little, no, no. One time, one day he has, hours later, nothing. That's just the beginning. Ten sons, dead, same day. Not even enough time to mourn one and then get to the next one. All of them, gone. One day they all went to have a little lunch. The wind came, made the house collapse, collapsed on all of them, and they all died. Same day, same time. Ten children. Went from being perfectly healthy, a prophet, kadosh, and respected, to being so sick he couldn't move, he couldn't do anything. There were so many infections all over his body that there were worms coming out of his body, not just coming in. Why was he tested? If you look at the beginning of the book of Iyov, the Satan came to Hashem...

21:02after Hashem was proud, was showing pride in His servant Iyov. He said, "Look at My servant Iyov. Look how righteous he is. He is a tzaddik, a prophet. Everything is good." So the Satan says to Hashem, "He is only this way because You gave him everything. You gave him everything, but if You take away everything from him, He won't love You. He won't fear You. He won't do anything. Hashem says, you have the opportunity to test him. Now the question is, why is it that Hashem allowed the Satan to test him? What did Iyov do? The fact that He gave him everything, He decided to give him everything. Hashem decided to give him everything. Why did He also give the Satan the opportunity to test Iyov? So now the Chachamim give a couple of reasons. Number one, Iyov was one of the three key servants to Pharaoh. There was Yitro, there was Bil'am, and there was Iyov. When Pharaoh HaRasha asked them, what should we do with Am Yisrael? Bil'am said, kill them. Kill them! They're going to torture you, they're going to this, they're going to that. He was an enemy of Am Yisrael from the beginning.

22:28Punishment eventually was getting killed and gained on forever. He thought, he thought. Spoke out, said no, didn't do anything. They built your country. Look, you don't remember, you said for tzaddik. Don't you remember, you said that, said it in this week's parasha? He built the country, made you guys rich, and what, are you going to kill them now? You're going to make them slaves. What are you going to do against them? That's how they came. Why are you going to go against them? And he realized they didn't like that answer. So he ran away. What was his reward? Eventually, he became one of the most righteous converts that ever lived. There's a whole parasha in the Torah called Parashat Yitro. Why? Based on Yitro. But what's the parasha about? Is it about Yitro? No. What's the parasha about? Ten Commandments. Matan Torah. Matan Torah. Iyov also agreed with Yitro. But he wasn't vocal about it. Wasn't vocal about it. He didn't say anything. He just ran away. "I quit. I don't want to deal with communists like you guys, terrorists." Running away, Hashem says, "You stayed quiet at a time of need. You're punished now to not be quiet. You have to be vocal; you have to stand up for the truth." Even though he was righteous, even though he wasn't like Bilaam, chas v'shalom, he was a tzadik, so you have to speak out. You made a mistake.

23:50So that gave, as soon as there was a kitrug in Shamayim, as soon as there was a case against him in Shamayim, Hashem says, "Okay, test him. Go ahead, let's see. Let's see, now he has to speak out." Why? Because he's defending his own life now. That's one reason. Another reason, a Gemara in Masechet Sukkah says that Hashem says to Iyov, "Iyov, the Satan is bringing a case against you." What's the case against you? The case against you is that when you build a sukkah, you build a sukkah, there's a few different ways you build a sukkah. The word sukkah, samech, kaf, hey. Three letters. But in Hebrew, unlike all other languages, the words are connected to what they actually mean. It's not like just some nonsense word. Somebody made up out of their head. The words in Hebrew in the holy language, not modern Hebrew but just the holy language, are connected to what they have to do. So for example, "sus" (horse) also means to go forward in war, which is exactly what is the nature of the horse—to go run into a war; he doesn't run away from a war. "Sukkah" also gives you a hint of the three different ways to build a kosher sukkah.

25:19Samekh is a circle or a square you could put. Meaning a sukkah with four corners, four walls. Four walls. That's the mehadrin. That's the most kosher sukkah you can possibly have. Four walls. It's a house, mamash house. Beautiful. The greatest sukkah you could possibly have. If you have four walls. Then you have the most common one, which is okay, which is the kaf. That's three walls. Three walls. That's good. It's not the best. It's not the worst. What's the least but yet still kosher? It's the least if there are no walls. Obviously, it's not a sukkah. If there's one wall, it's not a sukkah. If there are two walls, it's not a sukkah. What does it have to be? It has to be two walls and a small one. Two walls and a little tefach. Two walls and a tefach. So Hashem comes to Iyov, to Job, and He says...

26:22Had opportunities, you had this, you had that, great, Baruch Hashem, Chazak U'Baruch. Pharaoh asked questions and you said, "Listen, I could speak out, but then I'll put my life in danger." You don't have to put your life in danger. Technically, you don't have to put your life in danger for anybody. I ran away. I didn't say for, but I didn't say against. I ran away to save my own life. It says, "Your life first." He says, this is the way you lived your life in general. In essence, you just got by. You did the bare minimum. You did what you had to. You had tefillin? You bought tefillin for 400 dollars. Even though you had the ability to buy $2,000 tefillin, you know, something mehudar, special, a lifetime investment, beautiful, written by a tzaddik sofer, and so on and so forth. You didn't do that. What did you do? What's the least I can get one for that's kosher? Not kosher. You're not buying it from a Reform that has Eshet Chayil inside the tefillin. You know, you have kosher tefillin. They have tefillin, they print it from a printer, they put Eshet Chayil in it. They don't put the real parashot that they're supposed to. So, what's the least expensive one? 400? Okay, I'll get the 400. This is what they get for little bar mitzvah boys usually.

27:42So you have the $400 for a little bar mitzvah boy, but you're 35, 45, 50 years old. Why? Because you just want to get by. I just want to get by. It's not that you don't have the ability; you have the ability. Meaning, if that's all you have, it's all you have. No problem. But if you're making $50,000, $60,000, and you feel comfortable spending, you know, $500 a month on your car, $1,000 a month on your car, but you're not willing to spend $500, $1,000, $2,000 on your eternity. It's a problem here. It's lopsided. Your Yirat Shamayim is having some problems. So Hashem says to you, this is how you lived your life. Your mitzvah, you just got by. You just got by. You did the basic minimum. Whatever you had to do, you did. But the basic minimum. So when there was a time of kitrug, a case against you, the basic minimum wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to protect you. What is this like? In the Gemara Masechet Menachot, page 43, it says that they came to the Chachamim, the angels came to the Chachamim, and they asked them, I know we have a mitzvah, we have a mitzvah in the Torah, of wearing tzitzit, wearing tzitzit.

29:04So Rav Katina asks the angel, he says, do you punish a person who doesn't perform a mitzvah where technically he doesn't have to? Why? Why doesn't he have to? Because tzitzit, you only have to wear it if you're wearing clothing with four corners. If you're not wearing four corners, you don't have to wear tzitzit. That's the mitzvah. If it's four corners, you must wear tzitzit. It has four corners. But most clothes today don't have four corners. So if you're not wearing four corners, you're not obligated to perform this positive mitzvah. You're not obligated. You should, but you're not obligated. So Rav Katina, one of the Tannaim, asked an angel. He asked an angel, "Angel, angel, how are you? How's everything? How's it in Shamayim? I have a question for you, Mr. Angel. Mr. Angel, do you punish someone in Shamayim when you see people, what happens to them after they leave this world, they go over there?" You see what happens? Yeah, I see what happens. Okay. Do they punish someone when they don't perform a mitzvah? Because technically they don't have to. It's a positive mitzvah, but they don't have to perform it. They should wear a tzitzit, but they don't have to. You were specifically talking about tzitzit. And the angel says, yes, during the times of a negative decree, of a bad decree on Am Yisrael, when there's a

30:28it's a time of wrath when there's a decree against the nation, Hashem is sending a punishment, Holocaust, you know, all types of asonot that happen in the world, fires, pogroms, inquisitions, local, national, whatever it is, when there's some type of decree against the nation, he says that's when those cases get put up to Shamayim, and all of those people that didn’t perform the mitzvah that they could have, they get punished. Why do they get punished? Because had they done those mitzvot, they could have turned the tides around, and there wouldn't have been a decree. Until then, it wasn't a problem. Until then, it wasn't a problem. You didn't have to do the mitzvah. But the fact that you didn't do it, eventually you led to the shortage. So you get punished for it. So when people tell me, I'm sorry, it's 43b, this Menachot. When people tell me, "Oh, you know, tzitzit, you don't have to, you don't do, you don't do this," the Gemara in Menachot 43b actually says, Rabbi Meir Ba'al HaNes says, the punishment for not wearing

31:45A white tzitzit, the white strings, is much worse than the blue. Even though in the Torah it says to wear the blue string on there, it says the punishment for not wearing the white is much greater. Why? Because with the blue, you're an anus. You can't. It's not that you don't want to. You can't. You can't do it because you don't know what techelet is anymore. But the white, you can, and you chose not to. Why did you choose not to? You have a problem. So now this all has to do with Yirat Shamayim. When you have Yirat Shamayim, it's not just that you want to have a good rapport with Shamayim and not get punished in this world or the next, but Yirat Shamayim increases over time to a point where you're now worried about a relationship. A relationship with the Creator. And you're saying, this is like a husband-wife relationship. In a husband-wife relationship, it's not that the wife or the husband refrains from doing something to offend or hurt their spouse because they're scared there's going to be violence, if it's a healthy relationship. They don't do it because they're scared to hurt the relationship. So the highest level of Yirat Shamayim, the highest level of

33:07fear of the Almighty is when you're scared not of punishment, but you're scared of hurting the connection between you and God. You're scared of hurting the connection. So here the Chachamim say Iyov got there. Iyov got to a point where he was scared. He was doing all the mitzvot, but He was scared to hurt the relationship. But then Rabbi Eliezer says, no, no, no, he was at love. He was at love, not at fear. This wasn't, it was love. Why is there a machloket? Why is there a debate here in the Gemara? He says, because the highest level, the highest level of fear, highest level, you have the bottom, you have the highest level of fear, is the beginning of love. The highest level of fear of Hashem is the lowest level of love of Hashem. Meaning that most of us in this world that live today, 8 billion people, have no concept of what it means to love Hashem. No concept. But we're going to talk about it once and for all for people to understand what it means to love Hashem. What does it mean to love Hashem? Now, the Rambam...

34:32in Hilchot Teshuvah chapter 10, halacha 6, it says: "It's well known and clear in a clear matter that the love of God will not become attached within a person's heart until he becomes obsessed with it at all times as is fitting, leaving all things of this world except for this. Meaning, this becomes number one, two, three, four, five, six. It's the whole list. All he cares about is finding a way to love God. He doesn't care about money. He doesn't care about girls. He doesn't care about guys. He doesn't care about nothing. All he cares about is God. To such an extent, like Iyov. What? If he would kill me, I'd still serve him." with it at all times as is fitting, leaving all things of this world except for this. Meaning, this becomes number one, two, three, four, five, six. It's the whole list. All he cares about is finding a way to love God. He doesn't care about money. He doesn't care about girls. He doesn't care about guys. He doesn't care about anything else. All he cares about is God. To such an extent, like Iyov (Job). What? If He would kill me, I'd still serve Him. If He would kill me, why? Because I love Him. I love Him. He's the greatest. But He's killing you. I love Him. But He's killing you. I love Him. But He's killing you. I love Him. He's the best. You're insane? Yes. About God. That's love. It's not something rational. This was implied, the Rambam continues, by the commandment,

35:52In Sefer Devarim (Deuteronomy 6:5), "Love Hashem, your God, with all of your heart and all of your soul." This is in Shema Yisrael. It says one can only love God as an outgrowth of the knowledge with which he knows Him. The nature of one's love depends on the nature of one's knowledge. The nature of one's love of Hashem depends on the nature of one's knowledge. A small amount of knowledge arouses a small amount of love. A greater amount of knowledge arouses a greater amount of love. In so many words, the Rambam explains to you a yesod baTorah, a foundation of Torah, foundation of life, foundation of everything. The more you know about God, the more you'll have the ability to love Him. But if you're an ignorant fool, it's impossible for you to love God. Maybe you'll have fear, but you're definitely not going to love Him. It's impossible. So here we see that the equation has changed drastically. Why? Because most are ignorant.

37:18God, but they say, "No, I love Him. I love Him. I love Him. He's the best. I love Him. I love Him. I love Him. He's the best." What does it mean to love God? Now, originally, when Hashem created the world, the Zohar HaKadosh says that He created it with midat haDin, with the trait of rebuke, of punishment, of judgment. But then He saw that... the world would not survive without having some type of mercy. If we sin and get punished on the spot, we're not going to survive. So, He added mercy. But He never removed the judgment. The Zohar HaKadosh says, why did He never remove the judgment? Why did He just remove mercy? He says, because the judgment part, the judgment trait of Hashem that He created the whole world with, That's what keeps the world going. It's not the mercy part that keeps the world going. It's the judgment part that keeps the world going. Why? Why is the rebuke, why is the punishment the part that keeps the world going? It says it stops the world from being the same as the generation of Noach. The fact that people get sick, the fact that people lose money, the fact that people get divorced, the fact that people have problems in their life, that keeps them at bay.

38:47That humbles people. The fact that one day you're, oh, I'm president, I'm principal, I'm a millionaire, I'm this, and the next thing you know, you're constipated. You can't go to the bathroom. We're not talking about you had a depression, you went bankrupt. No, simply, you can't go to the bathroom. That's it. Your whole day's shot. Your whole life is shot. Nothing matters. Your billions don't matter. Your doctors don't matter. Nothing matters. You can't go to the bathroom. Simply, you can't go to the bathroom. That's it. I'm not talking about losing your money, your wife hating you, or your kids being on cocaine. Nothing else happened other than that. You cannot go to the bathroom. Everything becomes meaningless. That problem takes the air out of even the most powerful person. So, Hashem left it in the world because that's what keeps the world going and...

39:50Now, unfortunately, sometimes people still sin even though they understand the concept of punishment. And they'll even tell you, "I agree. I agree with this punishment. I agree that maybe the reason why I'm having so many problems—my husband is not treating me well, my kids hate me, no one's listening—is because I'm probably not modest. But I can't do it." I swear I can't be modest. I have to wear almost no clothes. I have to act like a... I deal with some people like this. I tell them, listen, you know, your husband is giving you problems. Your kids are giving you problems. Everything in your life is one big problem. All you have is problems. Maybe at this point, you realize you need God. Oh, no, no, I agree with you. I need God. Of course. I pray to Him all the time. I said, yeah, but if you pray to Him all the time, don't you ask yourself once in a while, why isn't He answering you? Yeah, that's a good question. Why isn't He answering? I said, because between you and me, He considers you praying to Him naked. And it's not an appropriate prayer. You go to the King of Kings naked. Yeah, but He created me. Doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference. Just because your parents saw you as a little baby naked, doesn't mean that when you're 20 years old, it's still okay for them to see you naked.

41:21Yeah, but he saw me naked. I came out of my mom's body. It doesn't make a difference. It's not appropriate. Yeah, but she's my mom. It doesn't make a difference. Yeah, but he's my dad. He's also a guy. It doesn't make a difference. Anyone with a little seichel knows it does not make a difference. It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. Even more so with God. Even more so with God. So if you're praying to God with no kisui rosh, if you're praying to God with no kisui guf, if you're praying to God in an inappropriate way, don't be surprised He's not answering. Don't be surprised. But some people are tough. Tom, that's the answer. He said, you know what, I agree. It's tough. Okay, it's tough, but you want your prayers answered. And they still go, they still go, they still go until Hashem breaks them. It's like sometimes Hashem has to break somebody in order for them to wake up. It's like they're an egoz. How do you call an egoz? An egoz is like a nut. Like a nut to crack. Walnut. Walnut. It's like a walnut. It's beautiful stuff. Amazing. Delicious stuff inside. But until you get there, Hashem is like sweat coming out of your eyes. Some people are like that.

42:44You tell somebody, listen, you need to work on your middot. You need to stop being angry. You need to stop being cheap. You need to stop being this, stop being that. You got to work on yourself. Yeah, I know you're right. But it's impossible for me. It's not impossible for you. Saying that is kefira, by the way. It's heresy. Why? You're saying Avinu Shebashamayim gave you something, gave you a test you can't pass. That's not Avinu. Avinu doesn't do that. Hashem doesn't do that. So, People need to understand that the mitzvah that you have as far as loving God is a commandment from the Torah. It's a commandment from the Torah. It's not like it's a level you should aspire to hopefully one day. You're obligated to do it. But now, if we just learned that to even get to the highest level of Yirat Shamayim is almost impossible for most people in this world because they don't even know they need it. How are we going to get to love? Well, first, we need to learn about it.

43:48During this amazing last eight days of the holiday of Hanukkah, we read the Hallel every day. Hallel is beautiful, and you read it on Rosh Chodesh, and you read it on holidays and so on. And one of the parts in Hallel, it says one of the parts, it says Hashem is going to punish all of this idol worship, all of the people, all the idols themselves, and the people that have made idols. But then it says, "Kemohem yihyu oseihem"—like them, like the idols, are going to be their makers. And And then it says, the ones that are not, what are the ones that are not? How do they symbolize the not? It says, anyone that relies on these idols gets punished. Now, Am Yisrael trusts in Hashem. And because of that, He helps them. He's their shield. The house of Aharon,

45:12trusts in Hashem, and because of that, Hashem is their shield and He helps them. The people who fear Hashem trust in Hashem. Because they fear Him, they end up trusting Him. And because of that, He ends up being their shield. So how do we get to that point? How do we get to that point? Now, you read Shema Yisrael a couple of times a day, and you should know Shema Yisrael by heart, but you're still supposed to read it. You're still supposed to read it. It helps you with kavanah. Helps you with understanding what the words mean and so on. But it says exactly what you need to do, what your purpose in life is. It says, after you say, Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. It's a verse in the Torah. Then you say, Ve'ahavta et Adonai Elohecha, Bechol Levavecha, Uvechol Nafshecha, Uvechol Me'odecha. And you shall love God,

46:13Hashem your God with all of your heart, with all of your life, and with all of your money, all that you have, all of your possessions. This is a commandment. These are three different commandments in the Torah, three different mitzvot in the Torah. This is your Shema Yisrael. Now, before I explain what this means, because the Gemara in Masechet Berachot explains exactly what all of this means. Before we get into that... It says all the different things you need to do. You should put tefillin on. You put the tefillin on the arm, on the head. And then you listen to what God said. And He gives you a reward for it. But if you don't, if you don't, you have a problem. What's the problem? וחרה אף ה' בכם ועצר את השמים ולא יהיה מטר והאדמה לא תתן את יבולה. and Hashem becomes upset. What happens when He gets upset? He gets angry. What does it mean when He gets angry? He stops the sky. What does it mean to stop the sky? No more rain. You can't eat anymore. No food. Famine. That's gehinom in this world. That's gehinom in this world. Anyone that doesn't believe it should just try fasting for two and a half days.

47:32Try fasting for one day. We almost feel like we're dying. One day, Yom Kippur. Come on, you have to do the whole thing? But I can't do half. There's no heter. There's no leniency for half of Yom Kippur. I'll daven for it. I'll pray. A little water. Just a little water. What's a little water? Hashem cares about a little water. Try fasting a little bit more than a day. Before the fast starts, what do they say? It's going to be a hot day. You still have to fast. It's hot. It's hot. I'm already hot now. I'm like, well, you're in the house. It's air-conditioned. Yeah, but it's going to be hot tomorrow. I'm fasting tomorrow. But it's not hot now. They're already worried about the fast. So imagine it's not a fast. Imagine you just can't eat. There's no food. There's no parnasah. There's no money. There's no nothing. Zero. Everything dies. Can you imagine that? In a nightmare, you can't imagine it, in a nightmare. So, for not doing, and there's more details, we're not going to get into it—that's the gemara I'm sure next week. But, just so you know what this whole thing is relying on...

48:35If you fulfill these three things, you're good. You don't have to worry about famine. You don't have to worry about anything. If you don't, you have a serious, serious problem. So it says, love God. What does it mean, love God? How do I know I love God? How do I know I love you? I send love letters. I write little things, Hallmark cards. I send Hashem, hey, I love you. How do I know I love God? He says you have to love Him. Maran HaShulchan Aruch explains. all of your life, meaning you're willing to give your life to Hashem. Someone says, "Go worship an idol," you're willing to die. "I'm not worshiping an idol." Someone says, "Go have sex with a woman you're not allowed to have sex with," a non-Jew, your wife that's niddah, or whatever, something you're not allowed to do, you're willing to die. Cardinal sins: Go worship an idol—go like this, go—uh, not doing it, willing to die for Hashem. You must love Hashem with all of your heart. What's "all your heart"? Every moment, every opportunity that you have to think about God—that's all you think about.

49:55Which means all the time. All the time you're thinking about, how could I serve God? I'm going to learn Torah. I'm going to do mitzvot. The Rambam says, how are you going to gain knowledge? How are you going to love God? Gain knowledge. You're learning Torah. You learn here. You learn there. You learn in the morning. You learn at night. You're doing whatever you need to do. Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem. Everything is good. So let's assume we're good with the first two. Let's assume kaf zechut to everyone in the world. Whoa, whoa, fantastic. Whoa, willing to die for God. Because no one, anyone you can ask, are you willing to die for God? For sure. It's not even a thought. Why are you even asking me? You're asking me? You know who I am? You know what kind of tzaddik I am? You know what kind of tzaddik I am? No, I can see. I can see what kind of tzaddik you are. I'm willing to die for, everyone's willing to die. Okay, I said that. Everyone's willing to die for God. No problem. Now your heart, your heart is clean. You don't have any questions for God. You know, when there's a little bit of kaparat avonot, you have a little headache, you're not asking God, why is He doing it to me? When the kids are sick, you're not saying, "God, why are You, come on, Hashem, are You not paying attention?" Who fixed this? Your heart's clean? Every time you have an opportunity to think, "Good, okay, no problem." So what's the last one? What's the last stamp? Money. The Gemara, Masechet Shabbat says, when someone goes up to Shamayim after 120, they go to the Beit Din of Shamayim, they ask them questions. They ask them questions, not because they don't know.

51:14But they give you the opportunity to, in essence, testify against yourself. Because you have to sign the decree at the end. One of the main questions is, did you study Torah? Did you make time for the Torah? Did you learn Torah? Did you make time to learn Torah every day? Good. Did you conduct your business with emunah? What does it mean to conduct your business with emunah? Aside from the obvious of whether you were honest, Did you give ma'aser? Did you give the appropriate tzedakah? Did you steal? Did you do things that were dishonest because you weren't so sure if God was going to give it to you in an honest way? Did you work on Shabbat? Did you do things to cut some corners? Did you get upset that someone opened a competing business across the street, and you got upset at God because the competition is next door to you?

52:14Did you help somebody that needed your help, even though he was also competition? Competition came to you, but he's a Jew. He says, "Listen, I need some help to get a supplier for all this stuff. Do you know anybody?" No, no, I don't know. My supplier is going out of business. Why is your supplier going out of business? Why, you can't help him out? He's a fellow Jew. Why can't you help him out? Why can't you help him out? Why can't he steal from you? This is one of the biggest problems plaguing our people today. People constantly think that someone is stealing their parnassah to such an extent that I could tell you a personal story. This is plaguing also the religious world; don't think it's just a problem with secular people. I had a rabbi contact me one time and he tells me, "Listen, can you please...?" ...not post your tzedakah in my group. Don't post, you know, because sometimes we post, you know, different things. Anyone that wants to donate their $3 or $10 or whatever they want to donate, or $30, whatever they want to donate, donate. We'll do kiruv, CDs, and so on and so forth. Once in a while we get lucky, we get $100. But this bothered this rabbi...

53:38The whole hundred dollars that I get maybe once in a blue moon bothered him now. I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, this chutzpah is in him and his team are in seven of my groups, each that have hundreds of people. He has this little homeless group of 50 people they added me to without telling me, and you're complaining to me. I... You post whatever you want. I actually tell my people to donate to you. They have a drive, they have something, they need something for the Beit Knesset, they need something for the kollel, they need something, I tell people, donate, it's a good cause, do it. What does he do? He comes to me, he goes, no, please, the board of our Beit Knesset told, they don't like to see other charities. I'm thinking to myself, it's mamash, it's like seriously, it's like you feel like you're dealing with people that are blind, deaf, and stupid all at the same time. But that's the Yetzer Hara. It makes us stupid. It makes us blind. It makes us deaf. It makes us everything. Why? Because the mitzvah of giving all your money is a very difficult mitzvah. It's a very difficult mitzvah. To mamash give all of your possessions, that means you want to do everything else too. Everything else too. It's the most difficult of all three. So now,

55:09Sometimes a person doesn't understand. So you tell them stories of some of the tzaddikim, and they say, "You know what? You did tzaddikim from 2,000 years ago, from a long time ago, from this, from that." Say, "No, you know what? It's tzaddikim now. Rav Steinman, alav ha-shalom, just passed away. Big loss for Am Yisrael, dor sh'yeromim." a generation of orphans, where Chas Ve'Shalom, we are nearly running out of Gedolei HaDor. But what a lot of people don’t know about Rav Steinman is literally the amount of opportunities that he had to fail. The amount of tests that he had in his life, we can't even count. So Rav Levinstein told my Rav, and he was connected to Rav Steinman, a few stories that maybe are not so popular or perhaps known, and each one of the stories is better than the next. So first and foremost, millions and millions of dollars passed through his hands. People, millionaires, billionaires, would always love to give anything that's related to him.

56:34But he himself, if you look at any of the pictures, you look at any of the videos, you see him. He lived in a five-by-five house. His bed was the same as his chair and his table. The whole house might be worth five dollars. Living conditions none of us would be willing to live in for five minutes. Forget about a lifetime, a week, a month—nothing. Five minutes, none of us would survive in it. You see videos online. Type in his name, see him talk, you see what he lives in. It's unbelievable. His bed was made out of milk cartons, milk crates. That's what held up the mattress. You see a couple of Chassidim, one of the amazing videos, a couple of Chassidim come to him and they say, yeah, we have this problem. What's the problem? Yeah, the student, you know, keeps applying to come to the school, to our school, to our yeshiva, and we really, you know, we don't want to let her in. We don't want to let her in, but the father keeps complaining. He keeps making a balagan. We thought maybe you could talk to the father. Maybe you could tell him to just go somewhere else. So, Shimon says, wait.

57:44Before I tell him to go somewhere else. Why? What's wrong with his daughter? What happened? Why can't she come? No, you know, it's complicated. What's so complicated? What is it? What is so complicated? You know, it's... No, what? It's about teshuva. It's about teshuva. It's about teshuva. It's not good for the kids to be next to these. It's not like us. Sort of Steinemann on the spot. He says, "Oh, it's ga'ava. It's pride. You have pride. That's your problem." He's not saying to the girl. He says, "That's your problem. You have pride. You have ga'ava." No, no, no, no. "No, no, no. It's not that. It's ga'ava." He keeps telling them, "It's ga'ava, ga'ava, ga'ava, ga'ava," to the point they become uncomfortable. On the spot, no questions asked. No questions asked. What do we think? He's going to say okay? He says, you know what? If I studied in yeshivot, people that study with me, they don't believe in yeshivot. Why can't you go? Well, you're better than them? You're better than me? I don't believe in yeshivot. You're better than me? Everybody's believing in yeshivot. What are you talking about? You have ga'ava. Tells them on the spot. One time,

59:11They come to Rav Steinman and they said he has a kollel started with 4,000 avreichim. 4,000 avreichim. Just imagine 4,000 avreichim, a couple of thousand shekels a month. 500 bucks a month is not a lot of money. But 4,000 avreichim, it's a lot of money. Every month you got to pay them. It's not like once in a while. And he used to pay them even more. He himself lives on milk crates. Avreichim, everyone has houses, this, that, everything is good. One day they come to him, it's right before Pesach, a couple of days before Pesach, we have no money to pay the avreichim. He goes, how much are we missing? He says, we need a million dollars. You know what a million dollars is in Israel? A million dollars is like a hundred million in America. We need a million dollars before the chag. We didn't come to you, and we thought we're gonna do this. We're gonna do that. We're gonna get the money. We're gonna go there. Nothing, for the love, nothing. Okay, I'm gonna go get you a million dollars. Okay. Where can we go? Oh, there's only one gvir, one. I see one guy that's really rich. Only he can do such a thing. Where is he? Let's go now. Stop with the limud Torah. Let's go right now. Where is he? They go take the...

1:00:32He is over 90 years old. He's not a little 25-year-old, physically fit, with muscles coming out of his ears. Scrawny, barely eats, nothing. Over 90 years old. Where is he? Now we go. Stop this whole life. Let's go. He knocks on the door. Hello. Gadol HaDor just showed up to his house. Imagine. If somebody gave you a picture of Gadol HaDor, you're already happy. Somebody gave you a picture of Steinman. Rav Ovadia, Rav Elyashiv, Rav Kanievsky. Already your whole day is met. Everything is fantastic. Somebody gave you a picture. Somebody sent you a text. A text, an email. Rav Kanievsky says to donate here. Already the picture puts you in a good mood. Already you see Rav Kanievsky, the kedushah on his face, already you're in a good mood. So imagine, you have Gadol HaDor showing up at your house. Hello? Hello?

1:01:32For the love, what do I owe the honor to? Okay? We're not gonna waste time. I need 1 million dollars now. No, no, no, no small talk. Hey, how are you? How's everything? How are the kids? Nothing, we need 1 million dollars for the yeshiva, guys. One second, for the love, he goes into the room. She writes a check. She gives it to him on the spot. "Thank you very much," he says. He tells those people, "Go cash it now. Give the Avrech money today. Don't waste one moment. Give them money today. Today, give them the money so they all have money for the chagim. So they all have it. Don't waste one second. Don't delay it. Today, give the money." That's the story. Now, why is this guy so excited to give Rav Steinman a million dollars in Israel? Why were people begging him, begging him to take their money? Begging him to take their money. He wouldn't. He doesn't need it. If there was no need, he'd give it to Yeshivot. Otherwise, for himself, not a penny. Now, it's very normal for someone who collects tzedakah to get a piece. That's what people do for a living. If they're criminals, they take at least 50%.

1:02:53If they're righteous, they still take 10%. Righteous people still take 10%. It's no problem. There's nothing wrong with it. Still, you can take a piece. But some thieves take 50-60%. They're thieves. But if you take a piece, take a commission, 5%, 10%, whatever, it is no problem. They could have easily taken 100,000, no questions asked. And he's getting millions of dollars every month for this kollel. He could have easily been in a mansion 50 stories high. a little piece, a little, even if it's just five percent. We're not talking about taking fifty percent, just five percent. Never in his life did he take even one percent. One percent, never. Why? That's an ish kadosh, that's a person who's kadosh, who's holy. Meaning, one of the people wanted to celebrate this big thing that happened. We just saved all these things. Celebrate Have a time to celebrate now. We're gonna celebrate another time, so Purim came up. Purim came up, the invite of Rav Shteinman for the love, wanting to do a celebration. See, you might say it, and also for the good things that have been happening with him are going forward. Everyone is doing better at the top for now. We want you to come join us for the celebration, so that oh, they love Rav Shteinman, appreciated Torah. Of course, he comes and...

1:04:21And they give him a cookie. A cookie, oznei Haman. Oznei Haman. You know oznei Haman, the little triangle cookies? They have a... Hamantaschen they call it? Hamantaschen. Hamantaschen. Okay, hamantaschen. I learn something every day. Hamantaschen. So, they give him a hamantaschen. How do they get hamantaschen? Jewish. Jewish, oh, okay. So they give him oznei Haman. And... Rav Steinman says, "What's this? What is this?" "Rav, it's Purim, a little bit." "What do you mean? Rav doesn't know what a hamantaschen is?" "Because Rav, it's a hamantaschen." "What bracha do you say on it? What do you do on it? What is it?" "Rav, it's mezonot. It's mezonot. That's the bracha you say on it. It's a cookie. It's a cookie." Since the day that I got da'at, since the day that I got my own opinion, my own da'at, I never did a mezonot prayer, a mezonot blessing, on anything other than disa. What's disa? Disa is like, like, it's like oatmeal.

1:05:48Oatmeal. It's like food. It's like grains. It's like nothing. It's like food for either if you don't have any money, and pretty much that's all you can afford, or you're a baby. Or you're really old. But in essence, what is he telling them? His entire life he did not have a cookie. Rabotai, his entire life he did not have a cookie. A cookie. That's why people want to give him money. That's why he's an ish kadosh. This is not about someone fasting for a day and feeling strong. This is not someone taking on themselves to watch their eyes for a month. This is not someone saying, "Okay, I'm becoming a little more modest. I'm going to put a suit on. I'll put a dress on." No! This is a lifetime commitment to nothing but Torah. Now, we're not Rav Steinman. You can eat cookies. Enjoy. No problem. But this is an ish kadosh. This is someone that loved God. That's what it means to love God. You love Him so much, you have no time or interest in anything else. Not even a cookie. Why? Because maybe the cookie, you'll enjoy it too much. It's going to take away from your love of Hashem. The cookie, the cookie, Rabotai, the cookie. Do you understand?

1:07:16Steinem, on one side, I wish he had a lot of chesed in Bnei Brak. I wish all of these religious people, all of their mitzvot, were sincere. He was an ish emet, to tell you the truth. He was sharp. So everyone thinks that all of what they do is lishmah. It's all for Hashem. It's all because they love Hashem. They love Hashem. They love Hashem. He says, I wish, I wish if 1% of all they did was for Hashem. If 1% of all of the mitzvot that everyone does, just 1% was really for Hashem. Just 1%. It would just be 1% only. Essentially, he told you what I've been trying to tell people for years. He just did it in five words. I've been doing it for years, trying to figure out a message. He just did it in one sentence. That's the whole ma'alah of an ish kadosh. He says loving Hashem is so far from us. It's so far from us. It might as well be a different world and

1:08:22Why? Because, in reality, when most of us think that we love Hashem, it's only because we love ourselves. We're doing what we're doing not because we love Hashem; we're doing what we're doing because we love ourselves. You're doing the mitzvot because you want a reward for it. You're doing something because it makes you feel good. You get something out of it. You're not like Iyov. You're not like Job where you say, even if He were to destroy me, I'd still do it. We're not at that level. We're not doing it l'shma. No, no, I'm teaching l'shma. I'm learning l'shma. You're meaning just for Heaven. I'm learning for the... No, no, what do we do? We learn because we want to tell everybody else we know. As soon as someone learns, first thing they do when they finish, yeah, oh, did you learn today? Did you learn today? They call their friend, "Oh, did you learn today? Oh, you didn't? Ah, I just finished. I just finished. You know what kind of tzaddik I am? I just finished. Oh, you didn't learn today? I got it already. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. Oh, I finished. That's what I'm talking about. I finished learning at 8 o'clock in the morning. That's how much I love God. You didn't learn for God. You learned to go tell somebody, 'Hey, I finished learning at 8 o'clock in the morning.'"

1:09:37I'm already finished. You want the kavod that even if you start with intentions that you're not supposed to, eventually it ends up being maybe, maybe good intentions, but nonetheless it's not what you say it is. It's not because you love God. Someone says, "No, but I do kiddush all the time." Yeah, you do kiddush because that's how you get to show off to everyone what kind of house you have and what kind of food you make. And what kind of Ba'al Chesed you are? Oh, but I give tzedakah. The school is raising money. There's a yeshiva raising money. Two and a half million dollars they want to raise in 32 hours. May they succeed. Now people say, hey, I just donated. You see, I donated 100,000. I'm an alumnus of this school. I did teshuva because of this school. I donated 100,000. Tzadik, you love Hashem? You don't love anything. The only reason you did it is because on the website they say so-and-so donated a hundred thousand. That's why you did it. If they didn't put your name, you wouldn't donate squat. Maybe you'd donate chai, $18. You wouldn't donate the hundred thousand. Let's call a spade a spade; let's be honest with ourselves.

1:10:59Okay, you donate, you get the mitzvah, you donate it. But don't pretend like you did it because you love Hashem so much. Because if you did, you wouldn't have waited for them to need the $2.5 million. They would have already had it from you. If you loved Hashem so much, they wouldn't need to ask you. You would have loved Hashem so much, you would have thought about what does Hashem want me to do now? Because that's all I can think about. All I can think about is what does Hashem want from me? No, what did you think about? You thought about going to make the $100,000 so you can give it. You understand? So that is our confusion. We're so tied to material that it has literally become part of us. Now the Sabba MiNovardok used to be a very, very successful businessman. And he ended up having the zechut to become one of the Talmidim Muvhakim, one of the key students of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.

1:11:59Told you the story, they met on a train and so on. They took all of his businesses, all of his money, and he spread it everywhere himself. He didn’t leave anything for himself because once he saw the emet, once he saw the truth of Torah, of Hashem, of just literally the purpose of life, it got to a point where it started disgusting him. It got to a point where money started being disgusting to him and... People always ask if money was so disgusting to him, how was he able to get so much money to build all of these yeshivot from these ashirim? So one time he goes to this gvir, this wealthy guy, and asks him for money, and the guy gives him a buchtah, a big amount of money.

1:12:59checks back then, cash, gold, and so on. Now, there's another guy, another rabbi, right after him in line. This guy was a well-known ashir, a well-known rich guy. So, you'd have, you know, different people, they come at a certain time. It was like a line. So, the Saba of Novardok gets an enormous amount of money. Just a second later, another rabbi comes... So I'll groom, da-da-da. He gives him money, he gives him a little donation, but the Saba of Novardok, let's say he gave, hypothetically, a million dollars. This other guy, he gave him 10,000. It's still a, it's still a, somebody donate. So the Rav says to him, he was also a Talmid Chacham, also had a yeshiva, no difference. But he said, you know, he had a little bit of chutzpah, he's a Jew, he wants to ask the gevir. He's like, listen, Baruch Hashem, you gave us tzedakah, thank you very much, I'm not complaining. I just want to know, what's the reason there's such a big difference from what you gave him, the Saba of Novardok, to what you're giving us? I mean, he has a yeshiva, we have a yeshiva. He has students, we have students. He's a Rabbi, I'm a Rabbi.

1:14:13Why? Is it because he's a bigger Talmid Chacham maybe? Is it because he has, maybe you think he has more Yirat Shamayim, more Ahavat Hashem, more love for Hashem? Like what's the reason? I just want to know. I could work on myself. Maybe I have the zechut one day to get more. I just want to know. That's the only reason. Not complaining. So the ashir, the wealthy guy, his name was Zalman. Zalman. He says, you, when you came to me, I can tell that before you left the house, you asked your wife how you look. You groomed yourself, took care of yourself, your suit, your shoes, your this. You came because you're about to meet me and you want to impress upon me and give me respect because you respect the money. Now, because you respect the money, I want to keep it. I want to respect the money, too. You respect the money, I respect the money. So I want to keep it. Why would I want to give you something you think is good? We both agree it's good. So why would I give you something I think is good? I want to keep it to myself. But the Sabba mi'Novardok, when he comes to me, there's no grooming, there's no nothing. He comes with the mud on his shoes. It's a, no second things. He comes in and he says, Zalman, Zalman.

1:15:40What is going to be with you, Zalman? Look at all you have here and you have nothing in Shamayim. None of what you have—the villa, the house, the castle, this, that—you can't do anything with it. Nothing you can do with it. Eventually, the worms are going to eat that too. They're going to eat you. They're going to eat the house. They're going to eat everything. The maggots, the worms. Nothing is going to be left. The only thing that's going to be left is mitzvot. And maybe, maybe your bones are going to be left if you're not jealous of people. Because if you're jealous, the bones will be gone too. What's going to be with you, Zalman? And I say to him, the only opportunity I have to actually have something is if I use what I have here to get something over there. So I give him as much as I can. I give him a bunch. Because he's not coming for the money. He's coming to save me. He's not respecting the money. He's giving me an opportunity to get Olam Haba.

1:16:40That's the difference. That's the difference, Rabotai. When you respect money to that extent, you're not going to want to give it. When you like money, you're never going to have enough. It doesn't matter how much you make. If you like money, you're never going to be generous. Baruch Hashem, I have a kaparat avonot with money. All of the people that like money somehow connect to me. They're always talking about their investments and their houses and their cars and their vacations and their deals, and it's everything but donations. The Bitcoin, and they tell me, "Listen, can you give me some investment advice because I gotta do this?" I don't want to give investment advice. I'm not doing it for money. When we do it for free now, no, but listen, for the love, if I make more money, I... I'm gonna give myself. I'm gonna give myself. I'm gonna invest a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, two, three hundred thousand in this business. If I make money, I'm gonna give ten percent of the business. I have no problem. I said, don't give ten percent. It was not the same over there. Just give it today. You have three thousand now, you have a thousand, whatever you have to give. Ten percent, give one percent today, nothing. It's all right. It's all an illusion. Why do they like money so much? It's impossible for them to part with it. I...

1:17:59This is also one of the reasons why sometimes people like to give me money in my hand, and I always try to run away from it. As soon as I started learning and seeing the outcome of it, I try to tell people, don't give me money in my hands. Don't give me cash, don't give me a check, don't give me anything. Just give it on the website. Go send it on the website, send it in the mail. Don't give it to me in my hands. Don't give it to me in my hands. Number one, if you continuously give me money in my hands, you're going to stop wanting to learn from me. This is already a Gemara. It says you lose honor, you lose respect for the teacher once there's money exchanging hand-to-hand. That's number one. Number two, even more so, this is the best test of whether you really want to give it for the right reason or not. If you want to give it for the right reason, immediately when you get home, you're gonna go on a computer and... you're gonna go on your phone or whatever it is, you know, to do it. A hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, a million dollars, whatever it is. B'ezrat Hashem. Good luck. Thank you very much. You're not gonna forget why it's burning in your heart. that you want to give to go save Jews. You want to save your brothers and sisters. You want to go save people that love God. You want to save people out there in the world. It's burning in your heart not to be a partner. It's burning you. It's killing you. You're going to go home. You're not even going to go home. You'll go in the car. On the phone, you're sending the money. You can't stand it that you're not part of it. But if you're trying to earn my kavod, you're not going to do it at all.

1:19:25You're not going to do it at all. Why? It's not the same. Now, I usually like to mess with rich people. Even when I was on Wall Street, I used to like messing with them because I think that people with pride, usually, they deserve to be messed with. So, for example, sometimes you have rich people, they get upset when you reach out to them and they don't know you. Like, for example, we cold call somebody and say, hey, listen, you want to invest with us, so on and so forth. You're not going to do it at all. Why? He's not going to know. I'm going to sue the computer. I want to see him when he gets it. I want to see his reaction. First of all, you should know. Baruch Hashem, I don't have that tikkun. You can give me a million dollars, it means nothing to me. It didn't mean anything to me in the past, it doesn't mean anything to me now. Baruch Hashem, I don't have that tikkun. But the point is that sometimes I see people, they want to give me money, they say, oh no, no, I tell them no, go give it on the website. They never give anything. Why? It's not the same. It's not the same. Now, I usually like to mess with rich people. Even when I was on Wall Street, I used to like messing with them because I think that people with pride usually deserve to be messed with. So, for example, sometimes you have rich people, they get upset when you reach out to them and they don't know you. Like, for example, we cold call somebody and say, "Hey, listen, you want to invest with us," and so on and so forth.

1:20:24Sometimes people get upset. How are you? How do they do this even if they end up doing business with you anyway? They always wonder how you got their name, like it's so important, like their name is in some safety box. So anyway, somebody just the other day, a day or two ago, reminded me of this because I sent an email from an email list to people and he sent me a reply saying, "How did you get my email?" Like his email is so special. How could I get it? First of all, he gave it to me himself. He just doesn't remember. It was many years ago when I was in the business world. But that's beside the point. People used to always ask me, "How did you get my phone number? How did you get my name? How do you know me? How did you reach me?" And I tell them the truth. What's the truth? I bought your name for five cents. That's the truth. I bought your name for five cents. Your name is worth five cents, sometimes one cent. Now that helped me in the business world. Why did it help me in the business world? Because the guy, whether he had 5 million or 10 million or 100 million or 30 million, it just deflated all of his pride. Why? He became human again. He realized that his name is worth 5 cents. All of us need to realize our name is worth 5 cents. Regardless of how much money you have, regardless of how smart you are, regardless of all the good deeds you did, all the good deeds you want to do, enough.

1:21:49You want to get to a point of loving God, you have to distance yourself away from these types of mindsets that make you think you are who you are. Now, the Saba MiNovardok, one time they tell you a story that he went to this ashir, this rich guy. He started telling him... same thing: money, money, money. This money is garbage, killing you. Your whole world is money, the whole world. But he got so into it himself, he got so into it, the whole lecture he's giving, he's giving the chizuk to the guy, he started getting chizuk himself. Now the talmid that was with him is watching this whole thing. The ashir, the rich guy, he gets so enthused. He gets so, like, mamash, lit up by this mussar. He opens the safe. There's a ton of cash in there. He says, "Take everything. Take whatever you want. Take!" And the Saba mi-Novardok says,

1:22:56Why are you giving me your garbage? You take it. You keep your garbage. Don't give me your garbage. I don't want your garbage. And then they start arguing. He goes, "No, take it." "No, you take it." "No, you take it." "No, you take it." "I don't want your garbage." "No, take it, please." "I don't want anything. It's garbage. Why do I want it? Take it, please. Maybe you could do Torah." "No, you take it. I hate it. It's disgusting. Why are you giving me your garbage? You take it. You throw it in..." They both got into it so much, the little avrech that's there to help the Saba of Novardok has no idea what's going on. He's like, "Kvoda Rav, we came here to raise the money." So he was smart, he took whatever he could take, and Baruch Hashem, the yeshiva used it for years. Years! Years, years, they mamash lived off of this money. But that's musar. That's musar, rabotai. When someone is able to distance themselves from materialism to such an extent where they realize it's nothing, it's meaningless. It doesn't mean you have to become homeless. It doesn't mean you have to quit your $200,000 a year job and that's it, finished. No! Understand what you're dealing with. Understand that if your material...

1:24:15Becoming a tool of the Satan, just distancing you away from Hashem. You have to work on it. You have to start fixing it now. Without love of Hashem, we have nothing. We have nothing without aspiring to love Hashem. We have nothing when we have something getting in the way, whether it be money or other material possessions. We're literally losing the match before we started it. What is it like? The Midrash on Song of Songs tells of a ma'aseh that happened with Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. This couple was married for ten years, a nice couple, religious. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai wrote the Zohar, Kodesh Kodeshim, in the Mishnah, and was able to revive the dead. Holy of Holies, they got a dollar, sick for the love. Ten years we're together, no kids, no kids. So, we need a Rav to authorize for us to get divorced. What can I do? Rabbi Shimon says, "Okay, but there's one condition, one condition. I need you to have, just like you had a wedding party when you got married ten years ago..."

1:25:35...need you to have, just like you had a wedding party when you got married ten years ago. You had to marry, you're the whole this, that, the other thing. I want you to have a divorce party no less than the wedding party you had then. The wedding says, "We do, no problem." They start sending invitations to everyone. Invitations alone are a couple of thousand dollars. The hall is ten thousand. The food is another twenty thousand. Next thing you know... $50,000 for a divorce party. Imagine the busha (shame). I hear you have a divorce party, but you have to be happy. Why don’t I just tell you to have a divorce party? Okay, divorce party, though. It all says, "We do, what can we do?" They hope everyone's this, everyone's celebrating, the Torah, the Torah, whatever, whatever. But you should know, halacha (Jewish law) is once there's a decision that you're going to be divorced, you're no longer allowed to be with each other, no longer allowed to be in a room alone. So at the end of the party, the husband goes to now his ex-wife, because tomorrow they have to officiate it with the Rav. Final notice with the Rav, that's it, finished. But as of now, it's still not finished yet. He says to his wife, "Listen, Baruch Hashem, we had ten good years, thank you very much, but listen, this is very hard, I'm going to sit here, I'm going to have a couple of drinks, you go to the house, go to the house."

1:27:05And take anything you want. Take everything you want. Take what's the most valuable thing to you. Take it. I'm going to be here. I'm going to have a couple of drinks. It's good enough. Every woman in the world that wants to get a divorce right now says, "Who's this husband? I want to marry him." So now, this husband has a couple of drinks. He falls asleep. The next morning, he wakes up and he sees... who's next to him in the bed? His wife. "Oh, not allowed! It's a sin! What did you do?" he says. "What do you mean?" The wife says, "What do you mean what I did? I did what you said." "What do you mean?" "You said get the most valuable thing in the house. To me, the most valuable thing in the house is you." You're the most valuable thing in the house. What do you think? The house, the chandeliers, the money, the cars. You think that's valuable? You're the most valuable. Yeah, but it's assur. It's not allowed to do it when we're divorced. That's your problem. You say take the most valuable. I take the most valuable. You want to go? Go do what Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai said. Go. Okay, we have to go see the Rav.

1:28:18They go see the Rav. For the Rav, I'm sorry, you know, it's really big bushah. We spent 50,000 on a divorce party, like you said, everything was good, everything was great, but we're here now. He says, Baruch Hashem, you don't have to get divorced. This year you're going to have a son. Now, the question is, it's Kodesh Kodashim. Angels came down and spoke to him. It’s not an imagination; angels came down and taught him Torah. When they said someone needs to go speak to the evil Romans to get them to stop the bad decrees on Am Yisrael, or we need someone that's a ba'al neis, someone that's responsible for miracles, who do we send? Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Why? Because he was used to miracles. He goes on the way to Rome, and the head of all the Shedim (demons) comes over there and says, "I'm here to help you." He cries. Why does he cry? He says, "Oh look, even the shifcha (maidservant) of Avraham Avinu had angels. We have only Shedim." He was upset; it's only a Shed. He was upset. So just imagine, this is the level that he's at.

1:29:42And he tells them, "Okay, now you don't have to get married. Now you don't have to get divorced. You can have a son this year." The question is, if you're able to revive the dead, if you see miracles, if you're doing all these things, why not just tell them that yesterday before they spent the 50,000? Why don't you just tell them, "Listen, Rabotai, I'll pray for you. This year you're going to have a son." It's still done to this day. People do it. Pray for people to have children. Baruch Hashem, it happens. I've seen it with my own eyes. Someone listened to some advice, we told them what to do, but Baruch Hashem, nine months later, five years they're waiting, nothing. Nine months later, Baruch Hashem, they had a son, a daughter. It happens. So Rabbi Shimon, it's easy business. Why? Rabbi Shimon knew something that we're not realizing. Rabbi Shimon knew the reason why there's no son, the reason why there's no daughter, the reason why there's no children. It's not because of the righteousness of the people. It's not because of the yirat shamayim of the people.

1:30:47That's not lacking. He told them to go have a $50,000 divorce party. They did it. For what? To fulfill the mitzvah. They could have easily gone to a different rabbi and gotten it finished. The rabbi said, "This, we do it." They're now dealing with the bushah (embarrassment) of telling everybody, "By the way, we're not getting divorced." How embarrassing is that? Everyone came to the party; now they... It's embarrassing. They have no problem. He says, that's not the problem. What's the problem? After 10 years... After 10 years, they got so used to each other, they forgot to love each other. And without love, there's nothing. Without love, there's nothing. Nothing is going to hold you together. Nothing is going to hold you together. You can respect each other. Okay, so you'll be roommates. You can like each other, so you'll be friends. You can use each other as husband and wife, mother and father. Okay, so she'll be a baby factory and you'll be a money factory. It's not that different from a prostitute and the person who buys it. No different. Nothing different. Without love, there's nothing. Even more so with the relationship with Hashem. Even more so with the relationship with Hashem, because if you are so busy chasing everything in the world that He gives you, and you forget to love Him, you have nothing. You have absolutely nothing.

1:32:12But the only way you can get to loving Him is first to learn to fear Him. Get to the highest level of fearing, where you actually care about the relationship. Care about the connection. Then we can start talking about how to express my love to Hashem. Now, the Torah gave you shortcuts. They're long cuts. They're not easy, but they're shortcuts at the same time. They gave you Shema Yisrael. He said, "Hear Hashem, hear us. We're here to tell You, I love You. Hashem, hear us. We're Am Yisrael. The Am Yisrael You said is special. The Am Yisrael, yeah, we're here, we're here to tell You, I love You. How are You going to tell me I love You? You said, 'Tell You I love You.' How? With all my life. Okay, I learned Torah. I'm putting my life on the line. No problem. If someone comes and tells me to go worship Yoshke, I'm dying on the spot. No problem, Hashem."

1:33:13Last but not least, when it comes to money, it means nothing to me if it comes between me and You. It means nothing to me. That's love. That's love of Hashem. If you're still second-guessing what to do, what not to do, whether to buy a new couch or to save another Jew, Whether to buy, to have an extension on the house, or new furniture, or a new car, or a new lease, or new this, or new that, or a new phone, or new this, or pay for the kids to go to yeshiva. If your contemplation is, do I get better tefillin, or better, more modest clothes, or more holiness in my life, or some toy that's going to go bad in a few months anyway. If that's still a question, we’ll falter. A lot of work to do, unfortunately. A lot of people know how to give money. They think that's the shortcut. But when Hashem says בכל מאודך, He means that the money that you give has to hurt a little bit. It has to hurt a little bit. If it's easy for you to give, it doesn't matter how much it is.

1:34:35If it's easy for you to give $10 or $20 or $30, it's not enough. If it's easy for you to give $100 or $200 or $300, it's not enough. If it's easy for you to give a million dollars, check, no problem, cash on the spot, it's not enough. It's not enough. Why? It's supposed to be everything. It's supposed to be not to the point where you become poor, meaning it has to be as if you've given a part of your life. If you just put here a share, it's a part of my life on the spot. Here, you take your share. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to use a part of my life to serve You. That's why Hashem says give ma'aser, give 20 or whatever it is. It's at least 10% because that puts everything in perspective where in reality you're admitting to Hashem Yitbarach. In reality, it should be 90 to Him and 10 to me. But you're doing me a favor where it's only 10 to you, 90 to me. Today, people give tzedakah, but they don't do everything else we talked about. Just giving money by itself is meaningless. Number one, it's never going to be enough. Number two, it's never going to replace the mitzvot. It's never going to replace the mitzvot. And that's some of the things that people need to understand: when it comes to tzedakah, when it comes to loving Hashem,

1:36:04When it comes to Yirat Shamayim, when it comes to serving Hashem, there are no limits. Now we can't be one of these fools that waits too long. You know, sometimes they tell you these stories, and it really puts things in perspective. The Chassidei Chabad were very furious with Rav Shach, alav hashalom, Because Rav Shach went to war with Chabad in general, especially with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It was a very famous war. So the Chassidim, or they call themselves Chassidim of Chabad, one time sent a rope, a rope to Rav Shach. And they told him, if you don't start quieting down, we're going to hang you with this rope. They threatened him with the rope. "I'm a letter. I'm gonna hang you." So Rav Shach told his helper, "Please make sure to put this in my will. I want to be buried with this rope. I want to be buried with this rope." He had a lot of hate mail, a lot of mail from people who hated him. And you know, the Chabad Chassidim and so on, who didn't like him, wrote him hate mail. "I want to be buried with all of this mail." One of his students found a sack full of letters and...

1:37:29Complaints, hey, did that. I want to be buried with this mail. But now add this rope, okay? The mail, he explained it to us, all right? He says, listen, I want this all in my zechut. I stood for the truth regardless of the fact that it wasn't popular. But why the rope? Why the rope, why the rope? He says, this is gonna be my witness in Shamayim, to be my witness in Shamayim that I love Hashem and ...of my heart and with all of my life because even when my life was on the line, it didn't stop me from saying the truth that needed to be heard. That's when you love Hashem, you understand? That's when you love Hashem. Nothing comes in the middle—not money, not people not liking you, not people offended, not people this, not people that—nothing, nothing comes in between when you... At a point where you're obsessed with God, you're obsessed with serving Him. You can't think of anything other than serving Him. You can't—there's nothing that you're spending any energy on other than, "What can I do for God?" That's when you've started loving Him. So, for all of those people that like to listen to the wonderful lectures that talk about loving Hashem and Hashem loving us and all of that stuff, this is the Torah.

1:38:51If you feel this way, if you don't, stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to yourself and pretending you love God. All you love is yourself. You're only doing the mitzvot. You're only wearing certain clothes. You're only giving certain money. You're only doing certain things for you, not for God. God doesn't need them. So, Relationship, if you want it to be a real relationship with its husband or wife, mother and son, father and daughter, colleagues, work, business, Creator and creation. If you want the relationship to have a good foundation, it has to be built on honesty. Stop lying and pretending you're doing it for God. Stop. Enough. It's okay that it's not 100%. It's okay we're not Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. It's okay we're not Rav Steinman. It's okay. It's not okay to lie about it, though. It's not okay to lie about it. What we're supposed to do is aspire. Try. Work towards it. And the Torah gave us a quick way to do it. Every day you read it, what does it mean to you?

1:40:08What does it mean to you today? What does it mean that you love Hashem with all your heart? Today. Today you read Shema Yisrael. It says in Mishnah Avot. You remember several months ago we went over it. Be very careful when you read Shema Yisrael. Why do you say be careful with Shema Yisrael? Read that shiur. Be careful. Why do you say be careful? What does it mean to you today? after him the whole of ahavta, you shall love Hashem with all your heart. What does it mean with all your heart today? Not yesterday; yesterday is finished. You can't do anything about yesterday. Tomorrow? We don't care about who knows if we're gonna see tomorrow. Today, today, what did you do for your relationship with Hashem to be represented with all of your heart? What did you do today? Did you do anything for today, anything, or is this the first time you decide to even think about God at 10 o'clock at night and 10 o'clock at night, finally, "Oh God, hey God, I'm here, I'm sorry. I was busy. I was busy, God. I was busy. You okay? I'm here though now. I'm here though now." You remembered God at 10 o'clock at night, you have a problem. It's not kol levavecha. What does it mean kol nafshecha? What does it mean your whole life? Did you think about God to such an extent that you were willing to give your life up today? Not yesterday. Yesterday you were a tzaddik. Today, today I'm talking about. Today. Today.

1:41:22Yesterday you were a tzaddik. Today. I'm giving everyone kaf zechut. Yesterday they were tzaddikim. The day before they were tzaddikim. Your whole life tzaddikim. What about today? Everyone loves to talk about yesterday. All the mitzvot they used to do. All the tzedakah they used to give. All the rabbis they know. All the books they read. My father is a rabbi. My grandfather wrote a book. My grandfather also wrote a book. My grandfather also is a rabbi. His name is Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, Yaakov Avinu. My grandfather also. It doesn't help me today. Today, today what'd you do? Today was kol nafshecha. Today was all your life. You do all your life today. What about all your money? There's somebody in the world that needs money. You have it. or you're still collecting it like it's a stamp collection. Somebody came, told my wife a story, says someone needed a few thousand dollars, and I had 3,000, and he needed two. I didn't think twice about it; I gave. Why did you give? Why did you give? It's a lot of money, you gave 66% of what you have. He goes, what am I doing, collecting money?

1:42:41If I don't need it right now, I don't need it. Somebody else needs it. Hashem gave it to me for somebody else. That's the mentality you have to have. Do you need it now? I'm not saying everyone needs to go to a zero account. But everyone has their tikkun. Everyone has their test. Everyone has to have the right mentality. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying everyone should just write a check Some anonymous place. I'm talking about. It's just having the right mindset. Are you doing as much for Hashem as you're doing for yourself? If you're spending $3,000 on navigation systems and $50,000 on cars and $5,000 on vacations and all of this exorbitant amount of money on different things. You're spending five, six, seven hundred dollars a month on just going out to dinner. But your tzedakah for the month is 50 bucks. You never have any money. You never have any money to give tzedakah. You don't love Hashem; you love yourself. It's fine, but at least be honest about it.

1:43:47Let's be honest because when the second part of Shema Yisrael comes up, when Hashem stops the sky and it doesn't rain anymore, and the bank account is empty and all that, when that happens, at least you're not surprised. At least you're not surprised. Why is the bank account empty? God, what happened? I had so much money, now I don't have any money. Yeah, I gave it to you. You used it for going out to lunch, used it for bitcoins, used it for cars and houses. You know, a bunch of people needed the money. You didn't give it to them. A bunch of people needed to do teshuva. I gave you the opportunity, but you didn't do it. What am I giving you money for? So that's the thing, if you're spending 46 million dollars on stupid paintings, that's what you're gonna go up to Shamayim with. They're gonna tell you, listen, you had 46 million dollars extra. You had 46 million dollars extra. That 46 million dollars could have saved a million Jews.

1:44:47Million Jews would have been able to do teshuvah with 46 million dollars. 1 million Jews would have been able to do teshuvah with 46 million dollars. You know what, let's cut it down to a hundred thousand Jews. A hundred thousand, not 10%, not a million, a hundred thousand Jews were able to do teshuvah with your 46 million dollars. 100,000 people would have had eternity and would have given you eternity with your 46 million dollars and one of them. Forget a hundred thousand, one guy. One guy would have been able to do teshuvah with your 46 million dollars. One guy. You would have given out the whole 46 million dollars, and one guy only would have done teshuvah. Hashem says, "I would have paid you three hundred and ten different worlds for the one guy to do teshuvah." And... What'd you do? You replaced 310 worlds with a ridiculous painting that is not even good enough for a two-year-old to review. This is what you have. You have this. This is what you have.

1:46:00Instead of having three hundred and ten worlds for just one guy doing teshuvah, for just one guy reading parashat Vayera, for just one guy putting tefillin on every day, for just one woman to put a scarf on her head to be a kosher wife, to be modest—You have this? You go up to Shamayim and say, "I have this look, I have a silly painting." Oh good, we're going to put that in Gehinnom with you. Do you understand? It's funny, but it's not funny because we do it every day. We don't have 46 million dollars for stupid paintings. What do we have? We have phones. We have computers. We have a bunch of stuff we don't need. We always have the stuff we don't need, but for the stuff we need, we always don't have money for. You tell people, listen, why don't you commit, do, I don't know, donate 150 bucks a month, 250 bucks a month, you make, it's 300 bucks a month, whatever it is, commit to something. No, no, no, I'll get to it, I can't commit to something now, but every month I'll think about it. What do I think about it? It's one, two, three, four times they give and then they finish. Why? Because they still have to pay for the more expensive car and the more expensive belt and the more expensive lunch and the more expensive dinner and the more expensive house and the more expensive neighbor and the more expensive date and the more expensive this and the more...

1:47:19Everything else they have money for except for Hashem. Do you understand? So, loving Hashem, Hashem gave you a few tools. A few tools that are going to be your measuring tape of where you're at. If you're connected to material to such an extent, it's better to just focus on your yirat Shamayim. We'll get there. But these shiurim like this give us at least an idea. At least an idea of where we stand with certain things before it's too late. We'll finish it off with a funny story so you guys get a little bit of a laugh. There was one time a group of guys who weren't exactly tzadikim, but they said, "Listen, we play soccer every weekend." And Tzad Hashamayim, one of us is going to die one day. So whoever dies first, come back and tell us what's up there. If it's true, we need to do teshuvah, need to keep, need to this, need to that. No problem. That's the deal with the soccer team. Okay. One of the guys dies. And he comes back a couple of months later, he comes back to one of the other people on the team.

1:48:45Hey, how is it up there? How are the fields? How are the soccer fields? Huge. How are the good players? Amazing. Wow, that's the good news. Oh, what's the bad news? You're playing goalie tomorrow. We don't want to be the goalie tomorrow, you understand? Don't wait too long. Don't wait too long to wake up. You got to start with Yirat Shamayim. You got to start learning some Mussar. Start learning some things to fix our Middot. To get to a point Where stories, like someone who never ate a cookie in his life, are not so far from us as if it's Moshe Rabbeinu. Because it literally happened just a few years ago. If we're so connected to the material, where a story like that is so far from us, where we don't even think it's real, that means we have a lot of work to do. Be'ezrat Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will have mercy on us and soften our hearts that are made of stone to help us do teshuva, and get to a high level of yirat shamayim. Be'ezrat Hashem, also love Him with all of our hearts, with all of our lives, with all of our time, with all of our everything, and we can fulfill this mitzvah like it's supposed to be. Any questions? Yes. From what he's saying, an average human being

1:50:13Okay. Okay. Okay. Why don't they say emunah? They say love. What's the difference? Well, emunah and bitachon are two different things from love and yirat shamayim. There are different aspects of connecting to Hashem. When you have yirat shamayim, you have a fear of the Creator. It's honor for the Creator. When you have love of Hashem, in essence, you're obsessed with serving Him. When you have emunah, emunah means that you have faith. Why don't they say emunah? They say love. What's the difference? Well, emunah and bitachon are two different things from love and yirat shamayim. There are different aspects of connecting to Hashem. When you have yirat shamayim, you have a fear of the Creator. It's honor for the Creator. When you have love of Hashem, in essence, you're obsessed with serving Him. When you have emunah, emunah means that you have faith. that He's watching. You have faith that He is overseeing everything that you're doing in your life. He's there for you. And ultimately, you have faith that everything is under control. When you have bitachon, that means you have confidence that whatever He's doing is going to end up being okay specifically for you. Specifically for you. So there are different aspects of your relationship with Hashem. It's not the same thing. So when

1:51:31Job was saying that even if God were to destroy him, he'd still serve Him, because he knew that ultimately the only reason he exists is to serve Hashem. He understood the purpose of his being a creation. He knew that he's here to serve Hashem, regardless of whether he's enjoying it or not, regardless of whether he likes it or not, regardless of whether he understands it or not. Regardless, he's still going to be the one that serves. He's still going to fulfill His will. So, there is a Gemara that says that Chananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—these are the three martyrs in the book of Daniel—were told by Nebuchadnezzar to worship an idol. They could have run away, but instead they said, "No, we're not going to worship an idol." So, he said, "I'm going to burn you." jumped into the fire. And Hashem saved them. Hashem saved them. And the Gemara, I'm shortcutting the story, but the Gemara says, where did they learn this? Where did they learn this thing to go jump into a fire? Where did they learn this from? The Gemara says they learned it from the frogs. Nah, you would think of Avraham Avinu. No, they didn't learn it from Avraham Avinu. Avraham Avinu is in a different world. They learned it from the frogs. Why the frogs? Why not Avraham Avinu?

1:52:58Why? Because Avraham Avinu still had sechel, still had a brain. He was acting based on, "I'm going to God. I'm doing whatever is serving Hashem." He says, we're not at that level. We're not at that level to think this, that, the other thing. We're like a frog. A frog has instinct. We're here to serve Hashem. We're going to serve Hashem. So what's a frog have to do with fire? It says in the Ten Plagues that happened in Egypt, At the end of every plague, it lasted a week. It lasted a week, then there were a few weeks of break, usually three weeks of break, and then the next plague came. And all the plagues lasted about a year. Now, when the plague of frogs came, Pharaoh came to Moshe Rabbeinu, and he said, Moshe, go pray to your God, tell Him to stop this. Moshe prayed, and the plague stopped. The problem is, it didn't just disappear. So now you have frogs, you have zillions and zillions of frogs everywhere. What are you going to do with them? So Moshe Rabbeinu prays to Hashem, "Get these frogs out of here." Hashem sends an angel. He says, "Tzfarde'im, frogs." Hashem says, "Get out of here. Go." So Tzfarde'im, all the frogs,

1:54:21They start running out. They go into the water. They go into the ocean. They go into different places. But some of them decided, no, we're going to go into the fire instead. We're going to kill ourselves. Why kill ourselves? It's a shorter time. We're going to serve Hashem better by saving the time. Saving the time. The five seconds, the five minutes, the two minutes that it takes to get to the pond. It takes to get to the Nile River. That extra few minutes, I'm not serving Hashem. He told me to get out of here. I'm not serving Hashem. I'm going to go into a fire instead. Why? There's no daas. There's no brain here. There's nothing. What does it mean? I need to serve Hashem. I need to serve Hashem. Even if He were to destroy me, I'd still serve Him. You understand? That's when someone loves Hashem. So obsessed with serving Him. There's no, "Oh, but you know what? I'm going to live an extra five minutes." As a matter of fact, I'm going to live much longer than five minutes. I'm going to get to the pot. I'm going to swim for another five, six years. I don't have to die. God didn't tell me to die. He told me to get out of here. Yeah, but getting out of here is going to take an extra five minutes. It's going to take an extra ten minutes. Better die. A frog is where they learned it from. You understand? So,

1:55:41These types of Midrashim, these types of Gemarot, these types of teachings from the sages, they're not meant to impress upon us things that make us feel like we're so far from them. It's actually to remind us that we can all do it. It's not to say, "Oh, Moshe Rabbeinu is this and we're never going to be that." No, you can be Moshe Rabbeinu, your own version of it. reached his full potential. You can reach your full potential. Everyone can reach their full potential. How do you get to your full potential? Eliminate your own desires and replace them with His. Replace them with His will. If you do His will as if it was your will, the Chovot HaLevavot says you will make your will into His will and... So that's the biggest difference. When you love Hashem, that means you're on a straight path, only doing His will. There's nothing else. There's no time for anything else. You're so obsessed with Him, with Hashem, that it does not leave any room for anything else. I forget the name, but one of the Tzaddikot, one of the Gedolei HaDor, and maybe five,

1:57:0260 years ago, 50 years ago, both her husband and her son, her only son, died in her lifetime. They say the worst thing for a parent to have is to have a child die in their own life. Not only is her husband dying in her own life, which is already a difficulty of its own, but her son, her only son, died. What did she say? This tzaddeiket, this kedusha that loved Hashem. What did she say during the levaya, during the mourning? You know, Hashem, we had a big ason in Flatbush. People are crying. People, it's horrible. What's the difference? What's the difference? What does someone that loves Hashem say? What does she say? She says, Hashem, initially I had to split my love between my husband, my son, and you. Then you took away my husband. So it's between You and my son. Now You took away my son. So all of my love is to You, Hashem. I love You. That's what she said. That's what she said. She's bearing a son. She said to Hashem, I love You, Hashem, with all my heart. Now it's all for You. That's the difference. It doesn't make sense to us because we're far away from it. But we can get there. We can get there. It's just that we have to stop lying to ourselves and pretend that we're already there. Because if you pretend that you're already there, you're never going to try to get there.

1:58:29You understand? If you're pretending like you're already a lover of Hashem, you're not even going to aspire to be a lover of Hashem. You're not even going to aspire to have yirat shamayim. You're not going to aspire to do anything. Because you already think you're okay. I had a guy, God bless him, hopefully he does teshuva. I have all these wonderful stories. People send me emails. It's nice, different ways for Hashem to help me do teshuva to people. Anyway, this guy, we started sending out newsletters started sending out newsletters. We sent a few of them to our email list, and a couple of them were articles, short articles that Rabbi Ephraim wrote about Chanukah in Hebrew. So he sent them out. This guy responds to me. He says, "Oh, I'm glad that you added Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon to your team." I'm glad that you added him to your... Apparently, you don't know the story then. Okay, fine, no problem. He doesn't have to know the story. It's not breaking news. Fine, no problem. I'm glad you opened... This is not the reason why I'm telling you this story. I'm glad you added Rabbi Ephraim to your team so at least now we have somebody to teach us the real depth of Torah.

1:59:46the real depth of Torah, and not the stuff that's really for just the new people, ba'alei teshuva, you know, the basics. Because for people like me, he talks about himself, for people like me that are matmidim, that are really serious Torah learners, it's, you know, it's not for us. It's not for us. And so I'm glad you added Rabbi Ephraim to your team to teach us the depths of Torah. Because I have to say, I'm a matmid, I'm really dedicated. And for me to hear some of these mussars that it's a rebuke, I know it's good for some people, but for me, somebody like me, it's not good. The reality, so now, oh, and then he finishes off the letter, and he says, I apologize for the disagreement or the argument we had. Some time ago or whenever it was, I apologize for that. It's just, you know, but I'm glad you added him to the team now. He's gonna respond, "Shalom, shalom," like, "Shalom. I don't remember the argument that you're talking about. I don't remember any argument. I don't remember who he is. I get a thousand emails every other day. I mean, it's not like I remember, but I knew that if I said this to a guy that has an ego bigger than this house and...

2:01:02that thinks he doesn't need Mussar. If I would have told him, "Listen, by the way, shalom, shalom, peace, hello, I don't remember the argument," what would have happened? "What? What do you mean you don't remember the argument? How do you not remember the argument with me? How dare you not remember the argument?" He remembers the argument, I don't remember the argument. See, that's why you teach Mussar and you don't teach the depths of Torah. The depths, the secrets of Torah. The shtuyot that come out of people's mouths is seriously like don't understand what's the—you know, it's really ridiculous. But that's the thing, it's like people fool themselves. They fool themselves into thinking that there's something completely different than reality. They make themselves their own idol. They put themselves on some pedestal because they read a few books or they have a few dollars or they have a few things. It's mamash—it’s poison. It's poison. It's poison because it gets to a point where the person is convinced with no doubt in his mind that there's nothing for him to change about himself. There's nothing for her to change about herself. You know what kind of tzaddik I am? You know what kind of kesut rosh I have? You know what kind of Shabbat dinners I give? You know this, you know that—people like to brag about their mitzvot and...

2:02:29So Mussar is supposed to remind you that you have nothing to brag about. You have a long way to go. A long way to go. All of us do. All of us do. Next. What is your opinion on someone who has dreams about events that are about to take place, especially when people that This person knows or is about to go through something horrible in life, a disease or something. Did it happen, or is this thing, it looks like it's going to happen? There's a history there. History that it did happen. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot has a whole section, maybe about almost 10 dapim, about dreams. To cut it short, I think we talked about it in the past. For the most part, dreams are all nonsense as an outcome of things we see during our life, especially during the immediate time frame that someone saw things. If they went to a zoo, they'll see some animals in their dreams. If they saw inappropriate things, they'll see inappropriate things in their dreams, and so on and so forth. So most dreams are complete nonsense. Now, once in a while, there's a dream that has some validity to it.

2:03:58And the Gemara HaMasechet Berachot gives different interpretations: different things have different signs. If there's a snake, if there's a verse in the Torah, if there are falling teeth—different signs that you see in dreams have certain significance. And in essence, it could even get to a point where a dream is 1/60th of a prophecy. This doesn't mean that every dream is even remotely close to being a prophecy. It just means it's a possibility. So, as far as the translation of dreams, the Gemara says that the translator of the dream needs to be someone that cares about you. It should be a talmid chacham, but in general, it should be someone that cares about you. And the reason why is because if someone cares about you, automatically, and they're also a talmid chacham, that means they would know this Gemara, they would know that they need to translate all dreams in a positive way because the translator has an effect on the actual outcome of the dream. If it's a real dream, the translator could potentially influence the meaning of the dream. This means if the translator says, "Oh, you had XYZ happen, that means you're going to lose money," it could potentially lead to the person losing money. Not the dream itself, but because someone translated the dream that way.

2:05:21So it's meaning that the translator has a significant impact. That's why you need to go to someone that loves you, because someone that loves you is always going to look at things in a positive fashion. One time, somebody came to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. He said, "I had a dream where they're cutting up my whole body in little pieces. They're cutting up my arms, they're cutting up my legs, they're cutting my head. They're making me into little hot dogs. Horrible, horrible dream. You couldn't even imagine such a horrible dream." And I felt the whole thing and this and that. What kind of dream? It's like a night terror. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says, "Oh, this means you're going to make money. This means you're going to have kids. This means you're going to get a house." He gave him all these wonderful interpretations, and all of it happened. Why? Because of the positive way of translating the dream. He could have easily said, "Hey, by the way, next week you're going to die," and he would have died. So that's another thing. You need to go to someone who knows what he's talking about and also cares about you. Last but not least, sometimes a person gets, you know, at certain times certain people are more spiritual, specifically women. More times than not, it's women. Not always, but more times than not, it's women. And they see things or dream of things that are of the supernatural. Many times this has to do with tum'ah more than it does kedushah.

2:06:47This has to do with impurity more than purity, especially if they see things in the living world, like here. For example, many people tell me that they see all types of shedim and different types of spirits and things like that. And it's literally every single time without fail, it's because they have some type of connection to idol worship in their house or in their life. And they forgot about it. They forgot about it. They don't know that they do. They think they finished it. I can tell you from my own personal experience, I've seen it, and it's literally, you're convinced you've taken care of everything, and then one day you move, and you go through your stuff, it's, oh, look at that, a little statue, a little New Testament, a little whatever it is, coin, or something connected to some type of idolatry. That's the problem. That's the problem. You know, it's literally almost 100% of the time. I told you guys a story of somebody that came to shiur and it was because of that. So, as far as dreams and some things happening to people, I'll pretty much answer directly to your question where someone dreams and it's almost like a prophecy of something negative happening to a certain person in their life. What should they do? I mean,

2:08:14Listen, it all depends on whether you think the person is going to listen or not. If you think the person is going to be receptive, you should try to influence them to stay away from that particular activity without necessarily telling them it's a dream. Just try to get them out of it in a different way. And the reason for that is because you don't want... Like if they don't listen, you don't want to be viewed as... You know someone crazy. You don't want to turn it into a chilul Hashem where you've turned Judaism into some type of voodoo. Sometimes, it's better to try to get them away from whatever you're supposed to happen in a different way. Try to get them to comply and so on and so forth. Very rarely does telling people about the supernatural actually help. Very rarely, it's either because they don't take you seriously and... because it affects them. Like, why would you have a dream about me? Why wouldn't I have a dream about myself? Like, who are you? Like, what makes you so... What is this? It's not normal for people to think like that. It's not normal for people to think, like, why would you have a dream about me? Why is Hashem telling you or someone telling you about me? Like, what do you have to do with me? You know, so people just can't accept it that way. Or if they do...

2:09:40they're going to become pests in your life, and they're never going to leave you alone. Every day they're going to ask you, "Did you dream about me again? Did you dream about me again?" So what does it mean? "I had a dream. I had a dream about this. What does it mean?" All of a sudden, you become some fortune teller. You become some fortune teller. You became this fortune teller from the 1990s that used to... Yeah, like one of these Nostradamus types. Yeah, he came from... All of a sudden you're... So you don't want that. You don't want that headache in your life. Try to get them to do teshuvah in a different way. Try to get them to stop whatever they're doing in a different way. It's much better. I mean, listen, there are a lot of things that are just better not to say. There are certain things, for example, that you're going to see in your life that are just not normal. you get the point, you know, if you get what I mean. There are certain things in your life that you're going to see that are not normal. Okay? Normal is just a bunch of people sitting, learning, eating, drinking, whatever we're doing right now. That's normal. Stuff coming out of the sky, voices, whatever, things that you only hear in movies, that's not normal. That's what I mean. So there are certain things in your life that are just not normal. If you say it to people,

2:11:02Again, they're either going to think you're crazy, and, you know, being labeled crazy is not a good thing, or they're just going to turn you into some type of idol, which is a problem of its own. You know, so very little benefit comes out of it. Very little benefit. Unless you're a crook, then you could pretty much take advantage of people. Next? Porch and cookies. Yeah. Next, anything? Finished? Yeah. I had a question that came to mind. You were talking about the frogs instinctively wanting to go into the fire to do the will of Hashem quicker. So I remember reading about Baba Sali, how all the animals on Shabbat, whenever they would come onto his property, like in his backyard and stuff, it could be cats, dogs, they would stand up on their hind legs whenever they walked through his property on Shabbat. No, no, seriously. Actually, this is what people say. This is like, so how would they instinctively know this? I mean, unless they're a reincarnation themselves. But if it is, and it's a regular dog, and he has his nefesh, but he knows he's gone to Shabbat, or passed into Baba Sali's backyard, his property. I got to walk on my hind legs.

2:12:28One day we're going to have a shiur about reincarnation. One day we're going to have a shiur about reincarnation. Reincarnation is not an easy subject. A lot of people like to talk about it because it's very mystical. It's very cool sounding. People talk about it like they know what they're talking about. The reality is that they make it sound like it's a good thing. They make it sound like it's fun. They talk about it in these different Kabbalah classes and Kabbalistic and mystical things. In reality, anyone that knows anything about reincarnation knows it's not exactly a gift; it's a form of punishment. And reincarnation is not necessarily all fun and games. Reincarnation is not necessarily always in humans. So, when you're reincarnated, that already means that you're a sinner. already means that you didn't complete some type of tikkun that you had. It could very well be that you're a tzaddik, but you didn't complete your tikkun. In many cases, you're a rasha that is given another chance because you did something good in your life. That's number one. Two, you're only given a few times before, if you don't fix it, you go down a level. So, the soul could go from a human to an animal. If the animal is not finished...

2:13:51you go to a plant. If the plant is not finished, you go to a rock. You know, so these types of things are, you know, people think you're crazy when you talk like that because most people talk about Kabbalah and talk about Reincarnation. Don't talk about that part of it. They could talk about, you know, cool things. You know how, yeah, yeah, remember your old life? You used to be a king, and you were a nice guy. And now it's just because you're such a tzaddik you only have to fix one more thing. Yeah, that's not the reality. The reality is you probably, like me, have a shemetz in some way or another. You messed up. You have to come back. You have to fix something. Fine, but Baruch Hashem, you're not a rock. The Ben Ish Chai, I believe it was the Ben Ish Chai, one time was arrested, sent to jail. And his talmidim asked him, why would Hashem do such a thing? Send a gadol hador, giant of giants, kodesh kodashim to a jail, to rot in jail for so long, could have done so many other things, and so on and so forth. Like, why make you suffer?

2:15:05He says, "Well, I asked the same question, and then the first night that I was in the jail, in the prison, I had a dream. And they told me that the walls of my prison cell have a bunch of neshamot, a bunch of souls in them, that the only way they can fix themselves is if somebody like me studies Torah in the cell. Why? They didn't come to shiur Torah. They didn't learn Torah when they had an opportunity. Hashem said, okay, I'm going to put you in a wall." You're going to be forced to learn Torah. But it's not going to be so easy. Why? The wall is going to be a prison wall. It's not going to be yeshiva. So, you know, these types of conversations are not exactly for everyone. Some people think you're crazy. Some people think, but this is what Torah says. What are you going to do? So, as far as animals are concerned, sometimes, not all the time, sometimes an animal has a human soul. sometimes an animal has a human soul, and the animal is an animal, but the soul is a human soul. It's two of the same thing. It's not one. Which means that the soul is suffering being inside the animal. It's not enjoying itself. It's not enjoying being a dog and peeing on everything. It's not doing that. It's still a human being. So it's suffering in there, but it also knows that it needs to do a tikkun. So there's one time somebody had a...

2:16:32was selling horses. Selling horses. And the Baal Shem Tov needed to buy a horse. And he came to the guy; he was one of his students. He wanted to buy a horse. And he saw this one specific horse; I mean, this horse was a worker, something unbelievable. He says, "Rebbe, whatever you need, just pick whatever horse." He had a bunch of horses. "Go ahead, whatever you need." Immediately, the rabbi picked that horse. The guy starts hysterically crying. Hysterically crying. "I honor you. I respect you. I love you. Anything you want, just not that horse. Take the house. Take the wife. Take the kids. Take all the other horses. Just don't take that horse." "Why? I want that horse." "No, please. Such a good worker. This horse is such a good worker. He wakes me up to give him a job." All the other horses have to be prepared and cleaned; this one doesn't stop working. It's the best horse I've ever had. Please, please, take something else. He goes, "No, no, I want that horse." Back then, they used to honor rabbis, not send them emails telling them, "Thank you, but we have another rabbi."

2:17:50So he says, "You want the horse? I'm going to give you the horse." "Are you selling me the horse?" "I'm selling you the horse. Sure, I'm selling you the horse." "You said I'm doing." He says, "Let me ask you something. Is there someone that you know that owes you any money?" Yeah, they really were my neighbor. You know, down the street, which, you know, is 30 miles away—farms and so on. Yeah, my neighbor over there, whatever, a few miles away. He owed me a little bit of money. He owed me a few hundred bucks, but he died. He died a couple of months ago and never paid me back. That's it. Oh, no, nobody owes me any money. I And he says, now, he was a good friend of yours. No, no, we were good friends. Honest guy. Just, he died. Misken died. Died young. Didn't pay me back. But that's it. Other than that, Baruch Hashem, nobody owes me any money. He says, no, but do you forgive him for not paying you the money? He goes, are you kidding? Of course I forgive him. That's my buddy. I love my friend. No, of course I forgive him. He died. Misken, his wife. I tried to help them and so on. Misken, he died. No, no, but for the fact that he didn’t pay you, do you forgive him now 100%?

2:19:07For the Rav, of course I forgive him. So say it. What do you mean say it? Say, "I forgive him, I forgive him, I forgive him for the money he owes me and didn't pay me back." The guy says it, and the horse dies on the spot. He goes, "What just happened?" He goes, "Your next-door neighbor had to come back in a gilgul of a horse that works for you to pay you back the money, the 300 bucks that he didn't pay you back. He had to come back as a horse." Why? You can't go inside Gan Eden with blood on your hands. Owe people money. So that's the thing people need to understand. The Gilgulim, the reincarnations, are not all fun and games. Not all fun and games. That's why, that's also part of the reason why the Gehinom shiur is not such an easy shiur to give. Yes, I'd love to give it to you guys now, right this second. It's just not necessarily a very easy shiur. It's not an easy shiur. The... Key is to know now. You need to do teshuva. I need to do teshuva. All of you need to do teshuva. Everyone that's watching, everyone that's not watching, everyone needs to know. Stop pretending that we're already at a... We're good. Because there is a... I actually heard Rabbi Mizrachi mention it recently. I think it was a clip or something. I saw somewhere. It was a mitzvah in Torah.

2:20:33There's a certain type of sinner. There's a certain type of sinner. And the worst type of sinner that Hashem doesn't forgive, it's written in the Torah. There's a certain type of sinner that Hashem doesn't forgive. What's that kind of sinner? Someone who says, no, it's not me. I'm okay. I don't need to do teshuva. I'm fine. I'm okay. I don't need to take off my wig, put a kiss of Rosh Hashanah. I don't need to put tefillin on early in the morning. I don't need to learn Torah. I'm okay. I'm all right. I'm a matmid. I'm a matmid. I don't need to learn mussar. I don't need to learn mussar. He says, that person, Hashem doesn't forgive them. So with Hashem, these questions, these shiurim, these get-togethers, these things will get Am Yisrael to wake up. Just like these four soldiers that I showed on my Facebook page today. Each one of them got a CD and an Asher Yatzar in our cube packages. We sent it out to an army base. An army base last week. And Baruch Hashem, a few guys, before they go on their holiday break, got some Torah to keep them away from all the Christmas trees and all the Avodah Zarah in this world. Hopefully, they will do teshuvah and get closer to Hashem Yitbarach.

2:21:49This is what you do and work for Hashem. There's no your opinion, there's no what makes sense, there's nothing. It's just you work, you do, you're a frog. You're a frog. If you're a frog. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen ve'amen.